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South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

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Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#471

Post by ChrisRR »

nostromo wrote: post #108
cdrini wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That chart is misleading; the rise/spike in deaths is always delayed from the rise/spike in cases. It does seem like Omicron is less deadly than Delta. The big concern is that because it's so significantly more contagious, that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to overwhelm hospitals. Sources: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Larry Brilliant (W…

I'm glad it's more contagious than Delta, because Delta is much worse than Omicron. Sure, I'd rather we didn't have Covid at all, but that's not been a realistic option for quite some time now.

One doesn't replace the other. They're both still spreading in tandem

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#472

Post by ChrisRR »

spookthesunset wrote: post #207
davidw wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly are they waiting on? The thing that needs to not happen is filling up hospitals. People died where I live because they could not get access to 'elective' surgery due to the medical system being slammed during the most recent Delta wave. Once that's not a factor, things will start getting more normal.

If hospital capacity is such a concern, why has there been just about zero effort in spinning up some kind of capacity to deal with Covid? Wasn't that the entire rationale of these lockdowns in the first place? To build capacity for covid? Like, it's been 2 years. We shouldn't be doing any of these restrictions at all. We should be angry at our governments wasting 2 years of our non-refundable time on this earth whil…

"Capacity" doesn't mean floor space. It means trained medical professionals, beds, equipment, consumables. These things don't just appear out of thin air

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#473

Post by SergeAx »

oneoff786 wrote: post #54

I’ve been tanking some downvotes for the past few days for saying this. Disease spread is only exponential for a brief initial period. It is not a good mental or even general model for how disease spreads. We have two years of observational covid data that shows this to be true. Spread slows down rapidly long before reaching 100%. People hear “5x as infectious” and reason that due to the nature of exponential models,…

Omicron easily breaks through immunisation (see Norway superspreading event: 60 out of 120 fully vaccinated negative tested people in 3 hours indoors). Question of severity is still open, let's hope for the best.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#474

Post by moksly »

trhway wrote: post #378
moksly wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would be surprising to me if hospitalization or deaths aren’t noticeably lower Here on vaccinated Denmark this is the truth. But we’re actually approaching last years levels regardless because of just how many people are getting covid this year. It’s more manageable thanks to the very high vaccination status, but we seem to have been too slow with the 3rd hit for a major part of the population. I have two shots…

what is the point of those lockdowns when 1. practically everybody is vaccinated and thus gets no symptoms or only light disease (and according to the latest science - superimmunity after that) and 2. the delta's and now omicron's transmissibility is so high among both - vaccinated as well as unvaccinated - that everybody susceptible to it (i.e. 30-70% of population, and anecdotally it seems to me that for covid it i…

We never had an issue with the delta variant. Omnicron is only now becoming an issue, so it’s the normal version that’s been the biggest issue so far.

I guess our government was too slow to roll out the 3rd shot since so many are affected.

The reason why we’re having lockdowns now is because the situation is that so many people are sick that we need to make sure there is enough people to staff things like power plants.

I don’t know about the light symptoms bit. I can’t remember the last time I felt this shitty, but I’m obviously not close to being hospitalised either. I’m probably fit for work by American standards, but I’ve been home sick since the 20th by Danish standards. This is very anecdotal of course, but I sure as shit don’t feel well.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#475

Post by dpark »

arghnoname wrote: post #463
dpark wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will note that it's easier to break the rules and commit voter fraud when you can vote by mail. In person voting at least requires that you be physically present on Election Day. Haven’t most (all?) jurisdictions supported vote by Mail for absentee ballots since a long time ago? All that vote by mail has actually changed is that people can vote from their homes.

I’ve usually voted by mail a few cycles before COVID. Previously it would depend on jurisdiction. In the jurisdictions I’ve lived in, the voter would have to request a ballot well ahead of the election and sometimes claim some allowable hardship, such as an illness that confines them to their home. This is the first year I’ve gotten election material I didn’t request. I had forgotten to deregister, but the crazy thin…

> It’s very unhealthy for a democracy when large fractions of the population distrust the results.

I fully agree with that. I also think it’s unhealthy for democracy when large swaths of the population feels disenfranchised, though, and there is a lot of that sort of shenanigans going on. I think the push against vote by mail is a mostly a 1)scheme to disenfranchise more voters, and 2) stir up unfounded BS about fraud.

It’s well established that high turnout favors democrats. And it’s well established that vote by mail increases turnout.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#476

Post by gilbetron »

koonsolo wrote: post #459
refurb wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will be interesting is to see the long term mortality rate. My hypothesis is we’re just accelerating the deaths of people over 70 years old (70%+ of the cases). If that’s true, you’d see a decrease in mortality over the next few years. Covid is basically doing what the flu does every winter (but on a larger scale) - it pushes people close to death over the edge.

This already happened in Belgium. When you look at the mortality rate per age group at https://statbel.fgov.be/en/about-statbel/what-we-do/visualis... , with age 85+, you can see the big spike in 2020, and in 2021 a big decrease compared to the 4 previous years. Less so with age group 75-84, but still visible.

While I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing does happen, I don't know if that we can say it happened yet, as I don't know how recent the 2021 death statistics are for Belgium. Usually it takes weeks or even months for mortality figures to be correct for a year, so that graph could just be showing that they don't have the full mortality results for 2021.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#477

Post by mekkkkkk »

tasogare wrote: post #422
mekkkkkk wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of life do you lead where mask mandates and moderate restrictions means two years of it is completely wasted. I understand freedoms being trampled and whatnot, but saying "they stole two years" seems pretty dramatic.

No he is totally right. I haven't been able to see my girlfriend for two years because of borders closing. I had to wait two years to see my parents. Friends and family that were supposed to visit me couldn't. Hundreds of event have been cancelled. I couldn't practice my martial art because our training place was close. I was denied entry in a library two days ago. I couldn't network or present my work in person at a…

I have a lot of sympathy. The situation sucks, and some have it worse than others. Expats and people with important relationships in other countries have it especially bad. I understand that. I have expat friends that have had a really rough time too.

That being said, it sucking is not the same as years being wasted. You still have opportunities to do plenty of other stuff. The only reason these years would be wasted is if you do not try to adapt. Are they going to be among the best years of your life? Probably not. Are they necessarily wasted and "stolen"? No.

Covid having a low impact on your life personally is missing the mark on a couple of levels. The low impact might very well be connected to the restrictions in place. In an alternate timeline where restrictions never happened, you might have been equally or more frustrated over the lack thereof as you lost a loved one.

How do you quantify how much discomfort for the general public is worth it to save X amount of lives? You and yours might have gotten dealt a shitty hand because of the border shutdowns, but on the aggregate I think the restrictions have been reasonable.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#478

Post by gjm11 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #399
gjm11 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words have meanings and connotations. When you use a dramatic-sounding word like "lockdown", there's an implicit bargain you're making. You get to have a stronger emotional effect on me, and in exchange I get to call bullshit if it turns out that you're using it for something that doesn't justify that stronger emotional effect. It sounds as if you're calling _every_ restriction anyone imposed on anyone in the name of…

> unless you take "flushed down the drain" to mean "made a bit worse", which again you shouldn't do because that's not what those words mean. It takes a remarkable amount of privilege to say something like this. We stole peoples proms, first dates, high school dances, drunken college hookups, funerals, weddings, livelihoods, social lives, you name it and we stole it in a failed attempt to “flatten the curve”. People…

Bollocks.

What "takes a remarkable amount of privilege" is equating what has happened over the last two years to the awful, awful things that can actually flush two years (or more) of a person's life down the drain.

Note that you didn't just claim that some people's lives were impacted badly enough to amount to flushing them down the drain. (That might well be true. The Plague Years have been much worse for some people than for others.) What you wrote, to someone about whom so far as I know you know nothing to speak of, was: "So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain". "Your life", not "my life" or "some people's lives". And, if I may borrow your language for a moment: you have no right to make that claim of others.

To repeat something I already said (but you apparently didn't read, or decided to ignore because if you acknowledged it it would be harder to maintain the desired level of outrage): yes, it's been much worse for some people than others. If you tell me your life feels like it's been flushed down the drain for the last two years then I'll believe you. But you don't get to point at some random person on HN and claim that the same is true of them.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#479

Post by mekkkkkk »

heavyset_go wrote: post #409
mekkkkkk wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The milder it gets, the less noticeable it is. As it gets less noticeable, the chance of exposure to new hosts increases. Seems reasonable.

The milder it gets, the less it is able to spread because disease symptoms are what help spread the disease in the first place. Also, there are selection pressures that select for increased virulence, otherwise all viruses would have evolved to be completely benign billions of years ago.

That makes a lot of sense too! I guess the sweet spot is where you'd find the persistent seasonal flues. Mild enough for people to be reckless, but virulent enough to cause sufficient spread.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#480

Post by koonsolo »

gilbetron wrote: post #476
koonsolo wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happened in Belgium. When you look at the mortality rate per age group at https://statbel.fgov.be/en/about-statbel/what-we-do/visualis... , with age 85+, you can see the big spike in 2020, and in 2021 a big decrease compared to the 4 previous years. Less so with age group 75-84, but still visible.

While I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing does happen, I don't know if that we can say it happened yet, as I don't know how recent the 2021 death statistics are for Belgium. Usually it takes weeks or even months for mortality figures to be correct for a year, so that graph could just be showing that they don't have the full mortality results for 2021.

yeah that is also possible
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